[net.micro.amiga] read/write errors

vanam@pttesac.UUCP (Marnix van Ammers) (07/19/86)

And here's my 2nd posting ...

Here's a little problem I ran into.  I recently bought
some Opus disks.  They were only $25 for 10 double sided,
double density, 3 1/2 inch disks with a nice plastic case.

Pretty soon I started having very odd troubles like getting
a little requestor box that said "Disk workbench 2 has a
read/write error" or something like that.  Well I thought
it was due to my buying cheap disks.  But the disks seemed
to work fine in my external drive.  Then I started noticing
that every now and then I couldn't write to one of those
disks.  But still only in the internal drive.

Heck.  I'll try to make the story short.

My internal drive's read/write tab sensor (a little black
mechanical thigamajig that feels for the write enable
hole (or write protect tab?) must be slightly out of
adjustment.  The Opus disks are just a tad thinner than
my other (Sony) disks.  About 75% of the time my internal
drive thinks all Opus disks are write protected because the
little sensor is able to go down far enough that it thinks
it's in the write protect hole even though it is actually
resting on the write enable tab.  Apparently the OS determines
the write enable/protect status when you first put the disk
in  a drive.  If somehow the sensor changes it's mind while
the disk is still in the drive, you'll get read/write errors.
The OS won't tell you that the disk now appears to be write
protected.  So the disks are really good, with no read/write
errors.  Can be very confusing when it happens.

Anyway it really threw me for quite a while 'till I figured
out what was going on.  Rather than have my Amiga in the
shop for 2 days to have that arm adjusted or fixed, I have
just fattened all my Opus disks with a little masking tape
and everything seems to be working fine.

By the way I can't get those double sided Opus disks with
the plastic case anymore.  Now they're only available in
cardboard boxes and the price has gone up $5.  The single
sided ones are available in the plastic case for $25.

Marnix A. van Ammers
--